Home › Washington › Benton County

Benton County, Washington

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

16historic places

—earliest paper

1905formed

206,873pop. 2020

5cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 16 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1975; 1 is also National Historic Landmark. Most listings are in or near Richland, Prosser, Kennewick.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Washington is not yet loaded on this site. Browse Benton titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

5 of 16 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

16 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Benton County Courthouse	Prosser	Building	1976
Carey, J. W., House	Prosser	Building	1989
Glade Creek Site	Prosser	Site	1977
Gold Coast Historic District	Richland	District	2005
Hanford B Reactor NHL	Richland	Structure	1992
Hanford Island Archeological Site	Richland	Site	1976
Hanford North Archeological District	Richland	District	1976
Kennewick Fruit & Produce Company Building	Kennewick	Building	2025
Locke Island Archeological District	Richland	District	1976
Post Office and Federal Office Building	Richland	Building	2024
Rattlesnake Springs Sites	Richland	District	1976
Ryegrass Archeological District	Richland	District	1976
Snively Canyon Archeological District	Richland	District	1976
Telegraph Island Petroglyphs	Paterson	Site	1975
US Post Office-Prosser Main	Prosser	Building	1991
Wooded Island Archeological District	Richland	District	1976

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Benton was formed in 1905 (1905-03-08) from Klickitat, Yakima.

BENTON created from KLICKITAT and YAKIMA.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Benton County population from 1910 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1910	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
7,937	10,903	12,053	51,370	62,070	109,444	142,475	206,873

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

5 cemeteries and 2 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 5 of 5 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Desert Lawn Memorial Park	46.19703	-119.17815
Evergreen Cemetery	46.28652	-119.49501
Resthaven Cemetery	46.28652	-119.28056
Riverview Heights Cemetery	46.19785	-119.13912
Sunset Memorial Gardens	46.28291	-119.3075

Historical populated places — 2 of 2

Name	Lat	Lon
Kinneyville	46.20763	-119.79226
Longview	45.92902	-119.41335

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for Benton County, Washington

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.